1716 Vegno Political Scandal

Vegno Political Scandal

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Country	Vegno
Started	II.1716 AN
Finished	IX.1716 AN
Judges	Carmine Buonsante Michele Benvenuto Francesco Visciglia

The 1716 Vegno Political Scandal was a nationwide judicial investigation into political world in Vegno held in the early 1716, resulting in the demise of the so-called "Moderate era" of the Republic and the resignation of many vegnese politicians and parties. Carmine Buonsante was the main judicial figure in charge of the investigation.

Background

Political framework

The political situation resulting from the 1714 Vegno Elections was a sharply jagged and divided picture, with the first party in the country taking only slightly more than 20% of the preferences. In such a divided situation, the center-right and center-left moderate forces that had already dominated the political scene for the previous 10 years emerged again.

Luca Zarrella was re-elected as President of the Republic and again gave the post of Prime Minister to Shalva Mancuso, secretary of the Partito Popolare Vegnese, while other important ministerial posts were assigned to the Antonio Visciglia's Partito Democratico Costituzionale, the last party to win the consent of the moderate majority. The resultin Mancuso II Cabinet had a little majority, but manged to obtain the trust of the Parliament in the days after the elections and began its work not without protests from the opposition parties, that wanted a government of broader understandings with common interests.

The 1715 Regional Elections

However, the national political situation precipitated following the regional elections of the following year (1715) where the extreme right led by the Partito Nazionalista Vegnese of Marco Unno and Michelangelo Lèvati obtained a flood of votes, putting itself in charge of as many as 5 regions out of 10 in which the votes. This surprising result raised doubts about the completely opposite results of the national elections, in which the PNV had obtained only 16% of the preferences with a sharply declining trend. In fact, the leaders of the PNV, after some great initial celebrations for the regional results, in late 1715 publicly claimed to have received an anonymous tip according to which the results of the previous elections had been distorted and modified by the moderates to obtain the majority, moreover a narrow one, in parliament.

Vegnese deputies protesting the government following the 1716 election scandal.

The Resignment of the oppositions

After the first declarations by the opposition parties at the end of 1715, the news in newspapers and television mastheads spread very rapidly, putting the majority forces in government under great media pressure.

However, the government's response was swift, and all the leaders of the majority parties and the highest offices of the Republic, including the President and Prime Minister, declared themselves totally extraneous to the affair and rejected any type of accusation, as the news was only a rumour of unofficial news.

However, the court of Cossa, under great pressure from the opposition parties who wanted clarification on the matter, began investigations in the first months of 1716 to completely clarify the matter and verify whether there had actually been any alterations in the voting procedures for the 1714 elections. As a response to this start of the proceedings, the leaders of the oppositions, in particular Marco M. Unno, head of the parliamentarians of the PNV, ordered the government for the first time in the first month of 1716 to resign, awaiting the official responses of the prosecution of the capital, because it was absolutely not fair to the people to continue governing with the results of previous elections which may have undergone alterations. The debate in parliament was vehement, with a very harsh response from Prime Minister Mancuso who responded in kind to the PNV exponent, refusing any kind of involvement and saying that he would continue his work in government without tolerating any further threats from the PNV.

The media resonance of this parliamentary debate was enormous, with the secretary of the PNV Lèvati taking advantage of this harsh response from Mancuso to accuse him of having something to hide and trying in every way to increase his consensus against the moderates who were in that moment accused.

The definitive collapse occurred the following month when the whole parliamentary group of the PNV together with Peppe Freeda's I Verdi resigned as deputies and refused to return to parliament until an official sentence was issued by the court of what was being dealt with of the case. Therefore, only the majority forces remained in parliament together with the members of Vegno Vivo, who would join the opposition only the following month. Majority leaders continued to govern for the next few months, being strongly accused by PNV members of governing alone in parliament without a debate with the opposition and without popular consent.